The Skills Behind Your Growth
The top ten skills I work with sales professionals and leaders to develop, shaped by 30+ years in the trades, distribution, and manufacturers’ representation.
The Skills Behind Your Growth
The top ten skills I work with sales professionals and leaders to develop, shaped by 30+ years in the trades, distribution, and manufacturers’ representation.
Staying Dialed In
Knowing your biases, assumptions, and patterns. Recognizing what helps you think clearly and act effectively, whether that means staying useful when a customer is angry, making the call you've been avoiding, or continuing to prospect after rejection.
Relationships & Respect
Being a resource customers want involved. Meet people where they are, understanding different roles, personalities, being credible and genuinely interested without confusing friendship with sales effectiveness.
Customer Understanding
Finding and connecting the dots that most salespeople never know exist. Knowing things about your customer, they may not even know about themselves. Asking enough questions to discover rather than assume. Knowing their business, people, workflow, frustrations, priorities, projects, purchasing habits, and anything that makes their life easier.
Using Judgment
Understanding the difference between high revenue and high profitability. Knowing where time is best spent. Separating accounts by strategic importance instead of making a milk run.
Existing Account Growth
Looking for products the customer buys elsewhere, upcoming work, new departments, new locations, and opportunities to deepen the relationship. No more waiting on requests for quotes, problems and phone calls.
Selling Value
Connecting what you provide to why it matters to each customer: profitability, inventory turns, labor savings, risk reduction, technical support, or another meaningful outcome. Moving beyond “Here's what we sell.”
Advancing the Business
Asking for another product category, following the quote, asking what is holding something up, asking for an introduction, and leaving a meeting knowing: what’s going to happen, who’s going to do it, and by when.
Prospecting & Opening Doors
Identifying the right targets, getting access, initiating conversations, creating familiarity, and staying involved long enough for an opportunity to develop.
Directing the Flow
Taking ownership without personally becoming customer service for every issue. Closing loops, coordinating inside sales, warehouse, credit, and technical resources.
Industry Knowledge
Knowing enough product, application and industry context to recognize opportunities, solve problems, and know which resources to pull from.
I’d welcome a conversation about what you’re working toward and where I may be able to contribute.
Email: matt@mattbutler.org
Phone: 801.244.4844
